


a stranger

by deadlybride



Series: A Perfect Circle [18]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Background Established Wincest, Dean-Centric, Episode: s08e01 We Need to Talk About Kevin, M/M, PTSD Dean, Season/Series 08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-14
Updated: 2017-04-14
Packaged: 2018-10-18 16:59:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10621212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadlybride/pseuds/deadlybride
Summary: May 9, 2013. Dean makes his way towards Clayton, Louisiana.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A Perfect Circle - _A Stranger_ , track six on _Thirteenth Step_

_Shy away, shy away, phantom_  
_Run away, terrified child_

 

Donald’s chatty. Dean sits rigidly in a nonthreatening slouch in the passenger seat of the cab, looking out the window at the boring view off I-81. Donald’s got an easy gig, driving his rig from Harrisonburg down to Knoxville, and he’s told Dean at length about his kids, his wife, his church, his years on the road. “Yessir,” Donald’s saying, now, while Dean breathes steadily and watches Tennessee blur greenly past them. “Driving’s not the most exciting work in the world, that’s for sure, but it’s a good payin’ job and I got union benefits, so it could be a helluva lot worse, you know?”

“Yeah,” Dean says. Donald hasn’t seemed to care much about the lack of response. He rolls on, talking about—shit, Dean doesn’t even know, something about dental. A sharp throb pulses out from his forearm. He grips it as unobtrusively as he can, his eyes shuddering closed. God, Benny. Stop. The ache’s a constant worry, Benny’s self all locked up inside him and his skin feeling like it’s stretched further than it’s meant to go. It—really hurts, worse than most things Dean’s felt, but it’s a debt that he owes. He’s going to pay it.

A highway sign flicks past. Sixty miles to Knoxville, and then he can get out of this awful truck, away from Donald’s chatter and the talk radio mumbling along underneath that. It’s… loud. He’s not used to it, not anymore.

He blinks away tiredness. He hasn’t felt right, sleeping. Not yet. He’s got a job to do, first. After he held up that couple of kids back in Maine, there was the car to steal, and he drove that until it ran out of gas, and then he walked six miles to the nearest convenience store and cleaned up as best he could in the bathroom, and then it was hitching, trying to look normal, nonthreatening. Remembering that sleep was something necessary, not just a luxury whenever he and Benny caught a break—hunger something that had be addressed, not a constant distant gnawing that had to be ignored in favor of the fight. He caught a catnap in a quiet little patch of woods outside Allentown, and there’s been the granola bars he’s been parceling out from what he stole from those kids. They taste like cardboard, but his stomach doesn’t feel like it’s up to much more.

“Son? You with me?”

He starts, but at least he doesn’t pull his knife. He’s been holding onto his arm too tightly and he releases it, deliberate and easy, and over the spreading pulse of pain he says, “Yeah,” again. His voice sounds like he’s been gargling glass.

“I was just askin’,” says Donald, still looking out at the highway. They’re in a string of semis, all going about ten under the speed limit. Dean’s been trying to ignore that, so he won’t scream. “I was wondering, where’d you serve.”

Dean looks straight at him, shocked into it. “What?”

Donald doesn’t turn, just shrugs and checks his mirrors. He’s paunchy and bearded, and he doesn’t look much at all like Bobby but they could be in a line-up together. He tugs on his used-to-be-black trucker cap. “Just wondering. 1st Armored down out of Fort Bliss, myself. Recognize the look.”

Dean looks out the window, doesn’t say anything. A mile rolls past, endless green and trees out the window, the afternoon suffused with golden summer light, and Donald picks up chatting again, talking about his sergeant from back when, what a hard-ass he was, and Dean’s off the hook, again. Funny, how often people screw that up. Sam used to say, it’s not like people could really know the difference.

He closes his eyes, his arm pulsing again. He stole a cell phone back in Augusta and it’s been sitting heavy in his pocket, waiting for him to pick it up. He hasn’t been able to bring himself to make the call. He doesn’t know why.

Back in Purgatory he’d been certain that Sammy was here, waiting, and he’d driven himself and Benny and Cas ragged, running low and dangerous through those dim awful woods, trying to get back. To get out, to be where he belonged.

The radio’s squawking about something, a sale on trucks at some local dealer. It’s grating, the salesman’s broad twangy voice needling into Dean’s ears. He wants to throw up, for a few seconds, and then immediately he wants to shoot the fucking radio, his hand twitching toward his hip before he stops it and balls it into a fist against his thigh. He breathes in hard through his nose, out slow through his mouth, over and over, and luckily Donald’s quiet for a minute, just the goddamn stupid radio playing its awful commercials breaking the quiet, and Dean manages to wrestle himself back under control. He’s got a job to do, and he’s going to do it. Won’t do anyone any good to have him assault some stupid normal truck driver and cause a four-semi pile-up on I-85 in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee.

Behind his eyes the woods are grey and dangerous, familiar, and he looks instead at the lush green outside the window. Humid, here. The sun’s bright. The truck’s cab is cool with the steady hiss of A/C, not the constant absence of any kind of real life. It’s eleven hours to where Benny said his bones are planted, assuming Dean can catch a ride relatively soon once he escapes from Donald. Assuming he doesn’t have to mug anyone, or hustle someone. He doesn’t know if he can, if it comes to it. He feels like he might bite a guy’s dick off, cut his throat, before he’d earn a ride, and then what.

Benny slips under his skin, roiling, and Dean shifts in his seat, his muscles gone rigid and aching. Eleven hours and then the digging, alone, assuming he even finds the damn cemetery in the first place. Maybe a day more. He doesn’t know what’ll happen when he finally pulls open the stupid phone. If he’ll even get an answer.

He just wants to go back. He wants his car, and he wants a double cheeseburger, extra onions, and a cold beer, and Sam, and quiet. He doesn’t think it’s too much to ask. He imagines making the call, Sam’s voice on the other end. A weird tight feeling takes over his throat and his fists are clenched too hard, fingers laced together and his knuckles grinding. Hard to breathe, for a minute.

“Okay, I’m gonna stop over at the Pilot here in a few miles,” Donald’s saying, over the rushing in Dean’s ears. Dean blinks, and somehow they’re closer to town. “You need to call anyone, or you need any cash or anything?”

“No,” Dean says, after a minute. He unclenches his hands, deliberately. “I’ve got it taken care of.”

Out of the corner of his eye he can tell Donald’s looking at him again. He doesn’t meet it. Donald’s not going to matter, once he drops out of the cab and gets his feet back on solid ground. It’ll be one more step completed, and then it’s just—putting one boot in front of the other, making his way south. Saving Benny, doing what he promised, that’s his job for now. It’s all he can focus on. He’ll worry about the rest later.


	2. Chapter 2

_to draw out the timid wild one, to convince you it’s alright_

 

There’s a sound, a deep rumble, and Dean’s awake and off the couch and holding his blade before he even really knows what’s happening, crouched ready behind the cabin door. He shakes his head, presses himself back against the wall. His heart’s beating hard and fast and he readies the knife, flips it up so the blunt edge lays alongside his wrist—only, wait. The rumble cuts off, and there’s a creak. He—he knows that sound. He sucks in a breath, through his teeth, feeling almost dizzy.

The door opens and he crashes forward, tackles the intruder even as he knows—he hopes—and oh god all that familiar weight crashes down beneath him and he splashes holy water, and borax, and grabs one long flailing arm and slices he hopes not too deep, and there’s no hiss, no bubbling skin, oh thank god and he grabs those big broad shoulders and looks into a gasping shocked face and says, “Sammy,” voice some low weird scrape he doesn’t even recognize.

Sam stares at him, open-mouthed, half-soaked and bleeding. “Okay,” Dean says, and sits up over Sam’s hips, “okay, you need—hold on—” and he does the tests himself, proves it, because he’s—he’s here, he’s real and he’s him, he knows it but Sammy doesn’t, maybe, and when he’s bleeding, too, blood trickling wet down the inside of his arm Sam grabs at his hands, stops him, says, “Dean, you’re—you’re _alive_ ,” with this slash of wonder curving through it, and Dean finds himself grinning, adrenaline still lighting him up on the inside, his heart beating too fast and his breath coming short and quick, and he knocks Sam’s hands away and grabs his damp hair and leans in and kisses him, their mouths wet with holy water.

Sam’s mouth—oh, god. He knocks it open and Sam lets him, startled-open and warm, god, he’s so warm. He left twenty messages, starting out curt and getting more desperate, all those dead numbers where Sammy’s voice had been replaced by some phone-company robot, and he didn’t know what to do, where to go. His knuckles are aching, his hands wound up so tight in Sam’s hair and Sam’s breathing open and fast against his mouth, now, saying something, and Dean—Dean can’t—

“Hey, hey,” Sam’s saying. Dean tucks his face down, bites at Sam’s jaw, his throat, and Sam’s hips surge under his, his smell still—still the same, pretty much, though the sharp stink of borax cuts through it. “Dean,” Sam says, but it’s breathier, and Dean plants a hand on the rough-wood floorboards, tucks the other down between them to the front of Sam’s jeans and curves his hand over the bulge there, hot and getting bigger, and Sam grabs at his shoulder, his hip, makes a wounded noise and arches up into it. Dean tucks his face down, closes himself into the warm Sam-smelling dark, fine shudders quivering all through him. He’s home.

**Author's Note:**

> [posted here on my tumblr if you'd like to reblog](http://zmediaoutlet.tumblr.com/post/159552968659/a-stranger)


End file.
